Sapphire announces NUC-sized AMD boards

AMD AIB partner Sapphire is entering a whole new market, the embedded PC market. The company showed off one board so far, but it says it is working to deliver "a range of standard and custom solutions" for the embedded market.

Sapphire points out that it is closely aligned with AMD and that it will use only AMD embedded tech in its new product line. The first board looks a lot like Intel's NUC boards - but it's powered by AMD G-series SoCs rather than Intel Haswell or Bay Trail parts.

The tiny board features dual display outputs, HD Audio, plenty of I/O options and it measures just 4 x 4 inches. Sapphire says the system will be available as board only, or housed in an extruded metal casing designed for wall mounting.

"Sapphire has the expertise to develop custom solutions based on powerful and proven technologies and we have put in place an experienced team to address these new markets," said Adrian Thompson, VP of Marketing for Sapphire.

Scott Aylor, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD Embedded Solutions, said AMD and Sapphire have a long history of working together in the AIB space.

"We look forward to seeing AMD based solutions from SAPPHIRE to address the embedded market," he added.

However, for the time being Sapphire's efforts appear to be limited to the embedded market - it is not clear whether the company plans to introduce consumer oriented boards in a similar form factor. For the time being, AMD doesn't have a platform to take on the NUC, although some vendors like Gigabyte have already started using low-voltage AMD APUs on NUC-sized mass market designs.